Behavioral fluctuation during the menstrual cycle
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | Previous research suggested changes in anxiety and mood connected with fluctuations of progesterone during menstrual cycle. These fluctuations could in turn lead to behavioral patterns connected to heightened states of anxiety. For example, in humans and non-human animals, ritualized behavior has been linked to states of intense stress and anxiety in a range of studies. In a pre-registered (osf.io/fq7sm) longitudinal study (36 days), free-cycling female participants regularly marked their day of the cycle, symptoms connected with the menstrual cycle, levels of anxiety, and activities they performed. These activities were evaluated by independent coders on the characteristics of ritualized behavior. The main prediction of the study were that psychological changes, specifically heightened anxiety, and perceived stress during the luteal phase, would lead to both an increase in the types of ritualized behaviors and higher intensity of those behaviors. We have not observed any differences in anxiety or stress between luteal and follicular phases, but higher anxiety (independent from phase) was positively correlated with more ritualized behaviors. |
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